shooting a concert

alaios · June 13, 2014

Hi there,
my lovely wife tomorrow she will be giving a concert.
I will have the right to move and I will have with me a sony 50mm f 1.8 lens for my emount camera.
Lens review here:
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/sony-nex-50mm-f-1-8-oss-lens-review-2175

This lens performs as a 75mm as I am using a cropped sensor and I wonder if would be able to get still some nice bokeh in the portraits.

I need some tips with the given focal length which would be the distance I should be taking shots and what kind of shots I can give a try.

What would you recommend?

Regards
Alex

Foques · June 13, 2014

what kind of concert is it?
what kind of venue are you going to work in?
What kind of lights does the venue have?

Mitchell · June 13, 2014

What is the venue like? Are you going to be down front in the photography pit? If not, I suspect your lens will be a bit short for anything other than wide views of the stage.

alaios · June 14, 2014

that would be a normal flatty room with chairs left and right with the main corridor at the middle. Is not a very big event... in total there would be 30 people and the pianist playing. My wife would be somewhere in the middle signing

Mitchell · June 14, 2014

I would shoot that from the back of the room with my 70- 200mm. You could move around in the back without disturbing the audience. You would also be less annoying with your shutter noise.

alaios · June 14, 2014

Hi,
I was shooting at 10 meters distance with my 100mm, 150mm cropped.. Still I was between the audience... Aperture was set to f/4 where my lens performs reasonably well but I had to set up my iso to 1600.. which is a lot.

Alex

divamum · June 14, 2014

High ISO is the name of the game in concert/theater situations. No way of avoiding it. Counter-intuitively, a well-exposed image at a higher ISO has less noise than using a lower ISO and underexposing. I frequently shoot at 2000 and 3200 in performance contexts, and even then I wish I had another zillion to go................

jonh68 · June 14, 2014

I'm shooting at 6400 and 12800 if needed to get correct exposure. I've pushed ISO 200 in post production and it will get noise before a well exposed shot at higher ISO, at least noise that is distracting.

alaios · June 15, 2014

Thanks for sharing your thoughts... Which is the point though that a underexposure (no shadow clipping though) would look better than bumping iso and having a correct exposure? I can share some of the shots soon(*)

(*) soon it would be something like one week or ten days

divamum · June 15, 2014

No the exact opposite - it's better to use higher ISO to get a better exposure and NOT have to raise it in post. Bumping exposure in post will ALWAYS result in more visible noise.

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Foques · June 16, 2014

^ this.

Often times, I overexpose when shooting a concert so that I could bring the noise down in post.

alaios · June 16, 2014

Okay so I am giving an example.. what is better to shoot iso 100 as much as underxposure (until the point you have no clipping of the shadows) or iso 6400 where you have the maximum overexposure (again I assume no clipping of the highlights). If you take the two raws and move the histogram from the sides (from the left side for the iso 100 and from the right side for the 6400) to the middle (this is the assumption of the "correct" exposure.
Which one would be better? My feeling says that the iso 100 would be better

Alex

divamum · June 16, 2014

Try it for yourself and see. You'll quickly find that you get more noise with the lower Iso/underexposed and boosted shot than the other one.

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alaios · June 16, 2014

even in such extreme case I reported?....Ok I will try it with iso 200 and then put some ndfilters and going to iso 6400 with over exposure.

zoomer · June 16, 2014

there is no question about this
shoot at the highest ISO required to get a proper exposure, shoot wide open even if it is not super sharp.

If you shoot dark and raise your exposure in post it will be a noise fest...and it is that blotchy noise you can't get rid of....you will also have motion blur and that cannot be fixed.

Shoot wide open and sharpen it a lot if necessary....be sure to mask your sharpening so you do not sharpen the non important areas.

I shoot dance at 12800 in dark little theatres all the time and as long as I take a nice bright proper exposure the noise practically disappears with a little noise reduction.

if your camera gets really noisy at 1600 then maybe you could rent or borrow a camera that handles the noise better.

nd filters really....why would you on purpose make it darker...

divamum · June 16, 2014

alaios wrote: »

even in such extreme case I reported?

Yes. I can only repeat what I (and several others) have said multiple times: shooting at a higher ISO and getting a better exposure in camera results in a cleaner and less noisy shot than keeping the ISO too low and then having to brighten it afterwards using software.

jonh68 · June 16, 2014

alaios wrote: »

even in such extreme case I reported?....Ok I will try it with iso 200 and then put some ndfilters and going to iso 6400 with over exposure.

Maybe there is something lost in translation but why are you going to use ND filters? that defeats the purpose.

Just try it yourself. Shoot underexposed at 200 and try to push it or shoot at an ISO that gets correct exposure.

r3t1awr3yd · June 17, 2014

All this talk about noise... am I the only one who converts to black and white and sells it as film grain?

zoomer · June 17, 2014

r3t1awr3yd wrote: »

All this talk about noise... am I the only one who converts to black and white and sells it as film grain?

No, sure your not.

Like you I love grain and some nice black and white...

divamum · June 17, 2014

I do too, but sometimes you can't indulge in "artistic" and gotta nail the colour/classic shot eg if you're shooting production pictures for lobby cards etc ...

Raise the ISO. Keep the exposure as bright as possible. Use noise reduction software to clean it up afterwards.

zoomer · June 18, 2014

just for fyi.
I use the noise reduction in Lightroom to clean up quite a bit, then I hit the auto reduction in Dfine 2 which is amazing at just making the noise disappear.
Take a look at the entire NIK software package and see if it is something that you can use. Some amazing capability in there, for the money it is a no brainer.

alaios · June 18, 2014

Hi,
I am not sure I made my point clear. I am guessing that after you increase the iso after some point overexposing is not helping that much.. so I am giving a specific problem.
1. Assume that you have a scene that the right exposure gives you a bell shape histogram placed exactly at the middle.
2. You select iso 100 to your camera and the histogram you get is heavily shifted to the left but I also assume that there is no clipping (so no information is lost)
3. Then I switch my iso to 6400 and as this is a huge difference in terms of sensitivity to iso 100. I increase shutter speed up to the point where the histogram is now all shifted to the right and again I assume that there is no clipping at the highlights (so again no information lost). In the very case your camera does not have so high shutter speed one can use also nd filters
4. Remember how the proper exposure at the step 1 was described. A perfect bell shape curve centered at the middle.
5. Now take the histogram of step 2, left shifted histogram and post process it (increase exposure) until you see the bell shape curve centered at the middle
6. Now take the histogram of step 3, right shifted histogram and post process it (reduce exposure) until you see the bell shape curve centered at the middle
7. If you did 5 and 6 right the two histograms should be identical (or very very close).

Now this gives the final question.
Are these two images identical in terms of noise shown? Because my guess is that the iso 6400 would be way more noisy.

Feel free to comment

divamum · June 18, 2014

One should always use the lowest possible ISO to suit the circumstances. If a lower iso can be used and still allow you to gain a good exposure while select the aperture and shutter speed you need for the situation, then yes, of course a lower ISO will have less native noise.
However, noise usually appears worst in boosted shadows. If you use ISO 6400 and slightly overexpose, reducing exposure in post, you will actually minimise the apparent noise vs taking the lower ISO shot and boosting it. Again, why don't you just fire off some frames trying your experiment and see for yourself? That's the quickest way to answer the question!!

In concert/theater settings, it is EXTREMELY rare to have optimum conditions, and one is usually bumping up the ISO as high as one realistically can. Therefore, a hypothetical such as you describe doesn't really apply to the question you originally asked.....

StueveShots · June 18, 2014

I shoot a lot of theatre. Alaois, you may find, depending on the camera you are using, that you can achieve excellent results by letting your camera do part of the work. The last show I shot, a couple of weeks ago, I was testing a new camera system I am thinking of purchasing. Because it was so new (and because I normally shoot theatre with a classic 5D, which is decidedly not new), I decided to find out how well the camera would choose the proper ISO if I let it.

I set ISO on auto (boy, that made me nervous!), I chose my desired aperture (as wide open as I could and still be certain my entire subject would be in focus) and I chose my shutter speed (depending on the action-level of the scene--since I was the director, it was easy for me to know this in advance). I also carefully controlled where the light metering would occur in my frame--again, I had an advantage in that I staged the show. Fortunately for you, concerts can often be more static than theater, giving you the time needed to make these choices.

The camera did a fantastic job of choosing the right ISO--something my old 5D never did well. With pp work including good noise reduction, I was very pleased with the results. You might give that a try if you are using a fairly current camera. It seems to me that the onboard meters and algorithms controlling ISO have improved tremendously over the years!

After doing this, spend some time studying your files--look at the data to see what settings worked most elegantly for you. You'll eventually learn to anticipate what the proper ISO would be in different stage lighting conditions.

jonh68 · June 18, 2014

alaios wrote: »

Hi,
I am not sure I made my point clear. I am guessing that after you increase the iso after some point overexposing is not helping that much.. so I am giving a specific problem.
1. Assume that you have a scene that the right exposure gives you a bell shape histogram placed exactly at the middle.
2. You select iso 100 to your camera and the histogram you get is heavily shifted to the left but I also assume that there is no clipping (so no information is lost)
3. Then I switch my iso to 6400 and as this is a huge difference in terms of sensitivity to iso 100. I increase shutter speed up to the point where the histogram is now all shifted to the right and again I assume that there is no clipping at the highlights (so again no information lost). In the very case your camera does not have so high shutter speed one can use also nd filters
4. Remember how the proper exposure at the step 1 was described. A perfect bell shape curve centered at the middle.
5. Now take the histogram of step 2, left shifted histogram and post process it (increase exposure) until you see the bell shape curve centered at the middle
6. Now take the histogram of step 3, right shifted histogram and post process it (reduce exposure) until you see the bell shape curve centered at the middle
7. If you did 5 and 6 right the two histograms should be identical (or very very close).

Now this gives the final question.
Are these two images identical in terms of noise shown? Because my guess is that the iso 6400 would be way more noisy.

Feel free to comment

I think you are making this way to complicated. If you up the ISO you don't have to manipulate exposure. I've shot concerts and HS football games to know pushing exposure in post produces more noise even at iso 200 than correct exposure at ISO 6400. Do the homework yourself and find out the best method that works for you.

The idea is to use the lowest ISO you can get away with. Your example is flawed. If you are at ISO 100 and its underexposed provided you have the shutter and aperture you want, then got to ISO 200, if that doesn't work then go to ISO 400 and so on until you get the exposure you want. The idea is to NOT have to push exposure too much in PP, under or over. A correctly exposed picture at high ISO will look better than one underexposed and then pushed in PP in most cases.

Get your camera out and experiment.

Mitchell · June 20, 2014

StueveShots wrote: »

I shoot a lot of theatre. Alaois, you may find, depending on the camera you are using, that you can achieve excellent results by letting your camera do part of the work. The last show I shot, a couple of weeks ago, I was testing a new camera system I am thinking of purchasing. Because it was so new (and because I normally shoot theatre with a classic 5D, which is decidedly not new), I decided to find out how well the camera would choose the proper ISO if I let it.

I set ISO on auto (boy, that made me nervous!), I chose my desired aperture (as wide open as I could and still be certain my entire subject would be in focus) and I chose my shutter speed (depending on the action-level of the scene--since I was the director, it was easy for me to know this in advance). I also carefully controlled where the light metering would occur in my frame--again, I had an advantage in that I staged the show. Fortunately for you, concerts can often be more static than theater, giving you the time needed to make these choices.

The camera did a fantastic job of choosing the right ISO--something my old 5D never did well. With pp work including good noise reduction, I was very pleased with the results. You might give that a try if you are using a fairly current camera. It seems to me that the onboard meters and algorithms controlling ISO have improved tremendously over the years!

After doing this, spend some time studying your files--look at the data to see what settings worked most elegantly for you. You'll eventually learn to anticipate what the proper ISO would be in different stage lighting conditions.

I've evolved into this same technique after years of shooting in the dungeon of a middle school and high school theater.

I shoot wide open (f2.8) with my fastest glass, spot meter on the actors face, and then let the auto ISO mode determine the most appropriate ISO to keep my SS above 1/125. It's a leap of faith, but after doing this for several years, I now have confidence in my equipment. I know a well exposed photo at ISO 6400 will not have objectionable noise.

Keep your histogram to the right.

divamum · June 20, 2014

^^This works great in Canon from the 7d onwards; cameras before that (like my 5dII) don't have such good auto ISO. It's one of the (many) reasons I can't WAIT until it's time to move on to a 5d3!!

Mitchell · June 20, 2014

Nikon D700 with 70-200mm lens from the back of a dark, middle school theater. This one at f4 (with more than one subject), 1/125 and ISO 6400. No noise reduction added in post.

Foques · June 20, 2014

ISO 4K at 1/160

divamum · June 20, 2014

7d (crop sensor). Lighting was AWFUL in all of these - practically shooting in the dark. Apertures were all in the 1.8-3.5 range.

1600 1/30

ISO 3200 1/100

iso 1600

ISO 2000 1/100 (5dII)

ISO 2500 1/160 (5dII)

Bryce Wilson · June 20, 2014

I'll add a couple to the mix. ISO 6400 f2.8 ss 640.

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Both these had a little bit of luminance added in Lightroom.

shooting a concert

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